Here are the first benchmark scores from the new Apple Mac Pro (affectionately called ‘The Cylinder’) which sadly don’t impress much.

Apple was in a surprise-the-crowd mode at WDDC 13 this year when they revealed the new Mac Pro (and later that day, the iOS 7 operating system) to the public. At first glance, you’d have mistaken it for a dust-bin. After hearing them out for 2 minutes, you realize that it’s a really expensive one at that. Here are the first benchmarks based on the new 12-core (logical) Intel Xeon E5-2697 processor:

The benchmarks look slightly underwhelming, probably because everyone had hoped for a much more powerful system than last time. Instead, Apple introduced a sizeably smaller box with marginally improved computational power. Boy oh boy does the company need to open their ears a bit more, and at least direct it towards the right direction.

Thankfully, the product is still a few months away from hitting the market. Perhaps the early state of the new Mac OS X coupled with lots of other optimization-to-do might be the reason behind these not-so-great scores. Here’s hoping that things look better (and run much faster) in the final, retail version of the Mac Pro 2013 refresh.